Among the team of people who collaborate when a motion picture or other video recording is being created, the film director is the person ultimately in charge of artistic and creative decisions. Based on the movie script and other materials, a director generally develops in his or her mind a vision of what the finished movie should look like, for example of the impressions that various scenes are intended to give the audience. Before and during the moviemaking process the director communicates the vision both to the moviemaking team (e.g., to set designers and camerapersons), and to the actors.
Directors often use storyboards for such planning and communication. Generally, a storyboard is a sequence of sketches or photographs that illustrate portions of the intended artistic product. Storyboards have been created by hand and also electronically by computer.
The movie script or screenplay contains the dialogue lines to be spoken by various characters, and also typically scene or action instructions. Some computer programs exist for writing and editing scripts.